Have You Played... Flood of Light?

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.

I like little games you can jump in and out of, or play all in one go, and Flood of Light is one of those. It’s a hand-drawn, 2D, adventure puzzle game. And if you know me, you know I love puzzle games. You play a small girl in a big raincoat, called “The Guide”, left in a city that is submerged in water. It looks like it’s been a British summer – loads of rain. It’s your job to help save the place by using light, alongside some little microwaves on legs (robots) that inhabit the city. As you go, you learn who The Guide really is, through small snippets of story played out through emails.

You have little orbs you use to progress through a level. You need to float them into lamp posts to power connected machines: sometimes lifts, sometimes doors. It’s not always as easy as just chucking an orb of light into a lamp post, as they’re sometimes too hard to reach and need a string of lights to get there. The Guide has a certain radius around her that the light can travel in, and beyond that it’s down to you to figure out the best route for the light. There are also wicks to collect in every scene, but by doing that you lose an orb, so you really need to be as careful as possible.

The thing that drew me was the art style. It’s a lovely looking game with a beautiful soundtrack to complement it. It’s also incredibly cheap on Steam and only takes about four hours, depending on how good you are, and if you don’t have to restart levels. It’s perfect if you want to sink an afternoon into a lovely puzzler.